


Hallo Spaceboy

by Anonymous



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: M/M, Malex, non-linear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-26
Updated: 2019-03-26
Packaged: 2019-12-18 11:34:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18249017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: The chaos was killing him.(Scenes from a life. Michael, through a kaleidoscope. )





	Hallo Spaceboy

Michael wore his human body lightly but he wondered at it, sometimes. Whether he wasn’t meant to exist in some other form, something better constructed to withstand the chaos inside him.

Scientists had always been baffled by the existence of spontaneous order in the universe, when the laws of thermodynamics seemed to dictate the opposite. Nature should be inexorably degenerating toward a state of greater disorder, and yet, all around them, the most magnificent structures had somehow managed to assemble themselves—galaxies, cells, ecosystems, human beings.

But Michael knew that any local increase in order was only possible at the expense of more disorder in the surroundings. And he was contributing more than his fair share of entropy, hustling the universe along to its inevitable heat-death, because his very existence violated all the laws of physics that said mind cannot act directly on matter.

_Mind over matter, Michael._

_Mind over matter, Michael. Has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?_

 

*

 

Always fairly ambidextrous, Michael became right-handed at the age of seventeen.

 

*

*

He dreamt his home planet belonged to another galaxy. It would make his calculations that much more speculative, of course, having to extrapolate beyond the Milky Way, but—

Mostly, he hoped he wasn’t from fucking Mars. Mars had already been thoroughly colonized by the terrestrial imagination, Michael thought.

But something in his chest ached when the Mars Rover Opportunity announced its battery was low and it was getting dark. He had a good notion of what that felt like.

 

*

 

Girls or boys, he didn’t find it confusing at all. Both/and; double helping, please.

After Alex left, he ploughed his way through a string of boys. Half-hoping maybe he’d been gay all along, because then he could tell himself Alex was only the gateway drug, not necessarily the love of his life.

But it was just… fine. Fine in the same way women were fine. He got his rocks off, made sure his partner did too, unless he was too drunk, in which case all bets were off. Sex left him restless, edgy. It didn’t seem to matter who he was tumbling into the sheets because he was always looking for Alex’s eyes Alex’s hands Alex’s hips Alex’s everything anything Alex. So he stopped looking and in the end maybe women hurt less because he could compartmentalize more. They were certainly easier to come by in Roswell.

 

*

 

Whenever Isobel had a problem she didn’t want Max to know about she came to Michael because Michael was the designated fuck-up permanently excluded from the moral high ground. So he levitated Plan B from behind the counter while the pharmacist was distracted.

Isobel was waiting for him around the corner from the drugstore. She tore open the packet and swallowed the pill dry. “Noah really wants kids.” She actually looked sorry.

“And how d’you think that would turn out?” Michael demanded. “Assuming it’s even possible for a human to impregnate an alien.”

“I don’t know.” Tears in her eyes.

“Best case scenario, your kids would be sterile,” he said brutally, torturing her because he could. “Two-legged mules in diapers with impossible genetic codes and tendencies toward bipolar disorder. Worst case scenario?” he shrugged. “Let your imagination run wild.”

“What the hell is _wrong_ with you, Michael?”

He didn’t know.

 

*

 

Aged seventeen, Michael had it all figured out. Dropping in and out of class as he saw fit. Touching down to ace his AP tests and _almost_ ace his SAT; a perfect score might attract the wrong kind of attention. The scholarship came; he accepted. Plan falling into place. After college, NASA. Get himself to the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston. Use their research labs to figure out who and what he was, where he was from. Commandeer a ship, make the necessary adjustments, and fucking blast off. To hell with Ground Control, Major Tom was halfway across the stratosphere, floating weightless, coming home.

That was the plan, anyway.

 

*

 

_This chaos is killing me_

Mind over matter. He churned sand and dust and tumbleweed into a twister.

_I never look away._

Mind over matter. He made it rain.

_This chaos is killing me_

 

*

Alex was emitting punched-out little sobs every time Michael thrust into him, pulling his hair so hard his eyes were watering, and he was braced on his bad hand, jolts of pain shooting up his arm. But there was no stopping— _don’t stop, Guerin, don’t you dare stop_ —because he’d never said no to Alex and wasn’t about to start now.

 

*

 

“Can you feel the spirit of the Lord?” the priest asked after the first exorcism.

_Just say ‘yes, Father’ and this will be over._

“Bismillah, no,” said Michael.

He and Max had watched _Wayne’s World_ last week.

“Beelzebub has a devil put aside for m—”

The second exorcism hurt a lot more.

 

*

 

The smell of charred flesh lingered in his nostrils.

He set his broken hand and repeated the words over to himself until they felt like axiom. _I killed those three girls._

After Liz skipped town, and after Rosa’s funeral, Michael wished he’d thought to put one of the other girls in the driver’s seat. He could have given the Ortechos that much, at least.

 

*

 

Valenti turned up at the Wild Pony one night, some kind of victory lap after getting into med school.

Michael kicked his ass in the parking lot.

Better late than never, he figured.

 

*

 

Max and his utter babe of a new partner wrestled Michael into the backseat of the cruiser. He was so wasted he couldn’t tell which way was up and his limbs had taken on minds of their own, flopping this way and that as Max tried to buckle him in.

“He’s related to you?” the blonde babe asked after they’d managed to contain him.

“Complicated,” Max grunted, starting the ignition.

“Ann Evans is a fucking _trip_ ,” Michael announced from the backseat. He’d gotten loaded and crashed her annual midsummer party, so Max had been compelled to don his uniform—metaphorically speaking—and arrest him. “A _fucking_ _trip_!” he crowed.

“Michael,” Max said warningly.

“Like what fucking _planet_ does that woman—” He shook his head, dissolving into laughter. “I really think your mom has something wrong with her, Max, because she just asked me, out of the blue, if I’d _ever had a gay experience_ —”

“She said she needed to _say something serious_ , you drunk asshole—”

“So I said, yeah, of course, Ann, I’m a bisexual—”

“ _Michael—_ ”

“And she had no idea what I meant, Max, no idea”—he was laughing so hard he could barely get the words out—“she gave me this _horrified_ look of ‘Oh my God, that means he’s got a cock and a cunt!’ And Max—”

“God _dammit_ , Michael!” Max braked suddenly and Michael’s head rebounded off the partition.

“Ouch,” he said, and passed out.

“Wow,” Max’s new partner said.

 

*

 

“Did you even study?” Liz demanded.

“A little,” he lied.

“No, you didn’t. I hate you.”

“Science is my thing, Liz. Just comes natural.”

“Science is supposed to be _my_ thing, but I still have to work for it.”

“Can’t it be, like, both our thing?”

“No, Michael. It can’t.” She walked away.

“Who cries over a tenth grade chemistry test?” he asked the air.

 

*

 

Every week he checked the names of the Iraq War dead, Air Force.

He wondered if his species had a god they prayed to.

 

*

   
2009. 

“Well, _that_ happened,” Maria said, looking amused and horrified.

2013.  

“I’ll drive you home,” Michael said. He wasn’t big on people spending the night.  
  
2015. 

“This can’t happen again,” Maria said. “You’re a liability, Guerin.”  
  
2017. 

“I gotta run,” Michael said, pulling up his pants.

2018.   
  
“This never happened,” Maria said.

“You sure about that?” Michael said.

 

*

 

Michael hit the ground on his knees. Desert and night sky as far as he could see. Nothing between him and the stars.

Except the light-years separating them.

_Take me home_ , he begged silently. _Somebody, anybody… please._

A few hours ago he’d left the group home for the last time. His truck was home now.

Except…

Visions of a long-lost alien family. Mothers and grandfathers and siblings and cousins and aunts. Some of them would have curly hair. Here and there, a pair of brown eyes, flecked with hazel.

_Come and get me. I’m waiting for you._

_Please._

 

*

 

Isobel asked Max to walk her down the aisle. Then she relented and asked Michael too. He could feel her trembling as the three of them marched towards the altar where Noah was waiting.

Lies. All lies. Michael couldn’t fathom why Isobel did it.

He drank too much at the reception and disgraced himself in front of Noah’s extended Indian family.

 

*

 

Whiskey and acetone was a bitch of a brew. He crashed into one of his lab tables, upsetting the titration he’d spent weeks setting up. It took every ounce of control he had left not to smash up the whole bunker. Glass beakers rattled threateningly.

If he wasn’t careful, the whole deadbeat drunk act was going to tip into reality.

He adjusted his whiskey-to-acetone ratios accordingly and walked the line.

 

*

 

The bass line from “Under Pressure” got into his bloodstream, thrumming through his whole body. D D D D-D D A.

D D D D-D D A.

D D D D-D D A.

_Why can’t we give ourselves_

_One more chance_

_Why can’t we give love_

_Give love_

_Give love…_

D D D D-D D A.

The fingers of his left hand, knobby and out of joint. He hadn’t touched a guitar since that day in the shed.

D D D D-D D A.

_Because love’s such an old-fashioned word_ —

D D D D-D D A.

 

*

 

Michael lay on the sand, arms folded behind his head, gazing up at the full moon. Leaving his body behind, drifting upwards. He landed with a whisper in the Sea of Tranquility.

_One small step for man…_

A shiver of moondust and he drifted on. The Sea of Crises was never far off. He caught a handful of dust from the basin and fell back to earth.

What he wouldn’t give to see the last of this damned planet as he made the speed of light out of the galaxy. Wrapped in space-time, he’d look over his shoulder and watch Earth explode into a blackstar.

 

*

 

“Sometimes I can hardly remember our first time,” Alex said.

“What?” Indignant, Michael nudged Alex’s head off his shoulder and squinted at him in the moonlight. “Our first time was legendary.”

“I think I wore the memory out, these last ten years.”

“Replayed it that much, did you?”

“Didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” Michael said, honesty cracking his voice a little. They were naked and on a chilly night the airstream didn’t offer much insulation. He found the sheet tangled at the foot of the bed and dragged it up over them.

“I wanted to remember it, every time I closed my eyes, but… the memory wore away after a few years, it was too delicate. Mostly I remember what happened after, when my dad—”

“Don’t.” There was a chill on Alex’s skin when Michael touched him. “I don’t think about it anymore.” He leaned into him, hoping some of his own warmth would seep into Alex’s flesh. Just basic science. _Heat always flows from an area of greater concentration…_

Alex’s icy fingers found his knee, and he tried not to shiver.

… _to an area of lesser concentration._

“But if he hadn’t—”

“ _Alex_.” Michael repositioned them, situating Alex between his thighs so he could tug him back against his chest and wrap his arms around him. “Tell you what, I’ll finish building my ship, and then we can shoot off into space to find that extraplanetary butterfly and _see what happens_ when we step on it—”

“You’re impossible.” But Alex’s tone was fond, and he was relaxing into him.

“ _I_ haven’t forgotten our first time,” Michael said, smug. “D’you want me to tell you about it?”

Alex shifted his hips slightly, and Michael took that as a yes _._

“It was afternoon, there was light streaming in through the windows of—”

“We got to the shed, and you just ripped your shirt off. Like you couldn’t wait to get out of it.” Alex laughed. “I was like, _whoa, fuck me._ ”

“I thought I was telling the story?” Michael pinched his nipple, not too hard, but making him yelp. “Anyway, I was devastatingly attractive, in a scrawny street-urchin sort of way, and the mere sight of my nipples—”

“You suck at this,” Alex said.

“Just trying to set the scene, baby.” But the undertow of memory was too strong, it was pulling him under. Their youthful faces swam into focus, bashful and excited and nervous all at once. Butterflies—nothing to do with Bradbury or string theory—fluttering in his stomach. _Kissing Alex, not sure how to go forward, pulling off his own shirt because he needed Alex to touch him. Hands everywhere, moving from Alex’s jaw to his back, down to grope his ass, kissing him without any finesse because everything he knew was coming apart at the seams, grabbing Alex’s ass harder, was he moving too fast, was this too much—?_

_—Have you ever done this before?_

_—Uh, yeah—_

“ _Uh_ , _yeah_ ,” Alex parroted. “Oh my god, the way you said that! I remember now, it was like, ‘ _Duh_ , I’m Michael Guerin, of course I’ve had sex before.’” He snorted with laughter. “ _Du-uh_.”

“I didn’t mean for it to come out like that,” Michael protested. He ran his hands down Alex’s thighs, tugging them further apart. “C’mon man, I was nervous.”

_—… but not, like, with a…_

_—With a guy?_

_Alex was laughing, and Michael laughed too._

_—With a guy, and, uh…_

“I didn’t know sex could be funny,” Michael said. “That it was okay to, like, laugh when you had no clue what the fuck you were doing.” He cupped the scarred, pitted skin of Alex’s foreshortened leg in his palm, touching it the way he touched the rest of Alex now. Gentle and firm and lingering. Alex didn’t flinch away anymore, but his breath caught.

_—and, uh… Not with someone I’ve liked. As much as I like you._

Alex turned his head and Michael leaned in to kiss him. Sweet and shallow. Alex pressed closer, twisting in the embrace. Stroking Alex’s neck, Michael felt his pulse leap when he realized how turned on Michael was.

_—Get this off—_

_Michael helped divest Alex of his shirt and there, that was better, cradling each other’s faces for another kiss, hands beginning to move, Michael’s dropping to Alex’s waist and Alex gripping Michael’s hips and dragging him in closer. The first bump of their pelvises and they gasped in unison. Another delighted peal of laughter from Alex._

“I was just so happy,” Alex said. “I wasn’t used to getting what I wanted.”

“Me neither.” He dragged his fingers through Alex’s pubic hair, making him squirm. “I wanted you so much.” Wanted him now. “It scared me.” Not anymore. “Didn’t want to screw it up, cause kissing you, I already knew it was the best thing that’d ever happened to me.”

“Me too.”

_—Have_ you _done this before?_

_Michael hooked his fingers through Alex’s belt loops, trying to control himself. He was huffing and puffing like a runaway train; he was afraid objects were gonna to start flying around the shed of their own volition._

_—No. I want to, though. With you._

“When you said you wanted to, with me—all the furniture rose two feet off the floor! I was like, _oh, shit—_ ”

“Really? I didn’t notice anything, I think the roof would’ve had to fall in, and even then—”

Michael wrapped a hand loosely around Alex’s cock. “My control was pretty solid by then. I could be sad, pissed, whatever, and I’d keep it together. My powers had never acted up cause I was happy, or…”

“Horny,” Alex supplied, a little out of breath.

“Yeah.” He grinned, predatory, and bit Alex’s shoulder.

_—How—?_

_—I want you to fuck me, Guerin._

_—Y-yeah. I can do that._

Michael slipped his fingers lower, finding Alex still loose and open from earlier. He groaned. “I really wanna eat you out.”

_—D’you know how to—_

_—I know I need to, uh, open you up first so I don’t hurt you._

“You didn’t want to hurt me,” Alex said hoarsely. Michael was busy rearranging them on the bed, shamelessly taking advantage of his able-bodied-ness to station Alex exactly as he wanted him. Flat on his back, good knee bent. “I thought that was so fucking hot.”

Michael ran a hand through his tangled hair and shook his head. “That’s fucked up,” he said harshly. But the sight of Alex bare and splayed on his sheets evaporated the bitterness rising in his throat. “I wanted to stick my tongue in your ass that day,” he rasped, “but I thought it might freak you out.”

“Michael.” Alex swallowed, dark eyes widening. “Fuck.” But he was never one to give in easily, Alex, not even when he was waiting for Michael’s mouth, cock resting heavy and damp on his stomach. “But you were telling me about our first time…”

“Why don’t you pick it up?” Michael crawled forward. “Spread your legs for me, _baby_.” He let the endearment drip off his tongue like molasses. All saccharine and filthy.

“You—you said—”

_—Or maybe I could blow you first? I mean, I’ve never done that, either, but—Christ, Manes. Why are your fucking pants so tight? Who even—Whoa._

_—Whoa?_

_—Yeah, whoa._

_—What are you—?_

_Michael dropped to his knees._

Alex sobbed, his hands clenching in Michael’s hair. Michael fucked his tongue in deeper.

_—Guerin, oh god, oh, ohh—ah, teeth!_

_Michael pulled off, coughing._

_— Sorry. Went too deep._

_He tried again._

“We used—hand lotion,” Alex ground out. “For lube. You… fingered me. I couldn’t—unh—believe you weren’t, like, icked out by…”

Michael rubbed his stubbled chin against Alex’s most sensitive skin.

_—Is that okay?_

_—It feels, oh it feels fucking—_

_—More?_

_—You tell me, Guerin, you know your dick better than I do._

_Both laughing again._

_Michael curled his fingers inside Alex and Alex yelled._

“I can’t—” Another choked-off little sob. “I’m gonna…”

_—Just do it, Guerin._

_—Are you sure you’re ready?_

_—Yeah, yeah, fucking do it already. Have you got the condom?_

_—Yeah. I—…_

_—Slow. Slowslow—there—_

_—Fuck, Alex._

“Fuck me,” Alex ordered.

Gasping, Michael surfaced with a sharp bite to Alex’s ass cheek. “Tell me how you want it.”

“Just like this.”

Michael pulled Alex’s good leg over his shoulder, condom and lube flying into his hand from the bedside table. There was sweat and spit and slick everywhere. The smell of sex humid on the air. Alex reached up to sweep his hair out of his eyes. Smiled. Michael gave him a crooked smirk in return, all game gone. Naked with love. He pushed into Alex in a starry rush.

Neither of them lasted very long. The warning tremors seized Alex’s limbs, every nerve and muscle fluttering; Michael gone rigid, trying to hold back. Entwined, frenetic. Rolling, flailing. Alex let out a long keening sound, then Michael a quieter, almost desperate groan. They pushed against each other and the sheets for another slow moment, as if trying to pin down all the ecstasy they’d generated between them. Then their movements ceased.

Eventually Michael began to drag himself away— _pull out, clean up, toss rubber—_ but Alex caught him tightly around the chest.

“Stay a minute, Spaceboy.”

 

*

 

Sticky. Sleepy. Entropy quiet; _matter over mind, Michael._ Chaos reassembled into two bodies, intertwined, at rest.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> All songs referenced are the property of their authors... here, David Bowie and Freddie Mercury. 
> 
> Thank you very much for reading!


End file.
